Rayleigh’s criterion for resolvability (23-26)

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Question

Angle between two pointlike objects that can barely be resolved through an optical device
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Review

The nineteenth-century English physicist John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, proposed the following criterion for resolvability: Two distant, pointlike objects observed through a circular aperture can be resolved when the central maximum of one coincides with the center of the first dark fringe of the other. The angle \(\theta_{\mathrm{R}}\)that separates two point objects that are just barely resolved through a circular aperture, known as the angular resolution of the aperture, is then just the angle given by Equation 23-25: